Friday, February 19, 2016

There Are Walls Around The Vatican

... but none around our churches*. You enter the Catholic Church through our individual churches, not the Vatican.

Look, Ma! No walls!

* - If you don't get the reference, the Pope recently chastised Donald Trump for wanting to build walls around America, but not being interested in building (metaphorical) bridges. Many pundits have responded by pointing out the huge, medieval wall around the Vatican.

7 comments:

But, the Vatican *is* a state, a polity. And the thing about the wall is not about putting walls around individual government buildings, but putting a wall on the southern border of the American polity.

It's worse than that, KT; the Pope was actually, from the auto-translation, actually being somewhat sensible in his response to a really nasty loaded question.

(Phil Pulella, "Reuters")

Good evening, Your Holiness. She now spoke very eloquently of immigrants' problems. Across the border, however, there is a fairly tough election campaign. One of the candidates to the White House, Republican Donald Trump in an interview recently said that she is a politician and even said that maybe she is also a pawn, one of the Mexican government tool for immigration policy. He said that if elected, he wants to build 2,500 km of the wall along the border; He wants to deport 11 million illegal immigrants, thus separating families, et cetera. Then, I would ask first of all what you think of these allegations against you and if an American Catholic can vote for such a person.

(Pope francesco)

But, thanks to God who has said that I am politically, because Aristotle defines the human person as " animal politicum ": at least they're human! And that is a pawn ... well, maybe, I do not know ... I leave it to your judgment, people ... And then, a person who thinks only of making the walls, is where he is, and not to make bridges, not Christian. This is not in the Gospel. Then, what I said, what to recommend, to vote or not to vote: do not meddle. I just say: if he says these things, this man is not a Christian. You have to see if he has said these things. And why do the benefit of the doubt.

Not out in English, yet.http://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/it/speeches/2016/february/documents/papa-francesco_20160217_messico-conferenza-stampa.html

Trump is a twerp, but he's not that much of a twerp; the Pope frequently doesn't think things through as I'd wish, but in this case.....

Thanks for the translation, Foxie. I'd figured there was more to it than what was reported. I'm more of a Benedict than a Francis guy, but I think Francis' heart is always in the right place. When things he says turn into argument fodder instead of meditational motivation, it's more a reflection on the person arguing than anything else.